Portrait of a Person with Schizophrenia Joan looks like a normal person. At times, she acts like a normal person and there are even times when she talks like a normal person. But, in getting to know Joan you realize she is far from normal. Joan suffers from schizophrenia. She has little to no friends. The friends she does make usually don't stay her friend for very long. Joan shies away from social situations and even pushes the people she loves away. A characteristic that contradicts her tendency to withdraw is her craving for attention. If Joan doesn't get enough attention she will through tantrums or even hurt herself. One day in elementary school Joan was being ignored by her teacher. So the teacher would pay attention to her, Joan got out of her seat and walked over to the art station where she then took a pair of scissors. Joan then shrieked and started cutting her arms, legs and face. Another time, shortly after Joan's brother was born, she took a bottle of her father's heart pills. She then walked up to her parents and poured the pills into her mouth and swallowed about half of the pills. It is apparent that Joan had no real intention of actually killing herself either time. Joan was diagnosed with schizophrenia at a rare age. Most cases are not recognized until late adolescence or early twenties. Joan was diagnosed when she was thirteen years old. It is believed that there is a genetic link to Joan's diagnosis. In a genealogical study of her paternal family, Joan's great-grandmother was believed to suffer from schizophrenia as well. An aunt on Joan's maternal side has also been diagnosed with schizophrenia. When Joan was nine years old her parents divorced. Less than six months later her favorite cousin was killed in a drunk driving accident. It was around this time when her symptoms began to heighten drastically. Joan started to believe that "little green aliens" were following her around. She insisted that these "aliens" believed her to be their "queen." Joan also believed that the "aliens" were going to take her "home" when she was ready. She claimed she was never told when she would be "ready", but that she would just be gone the moment it happened.
Lisa was in school and pricked herself with a needle that drew blood. Many told Lisa’s stubborn parents that she needed a psychiatrist. They simply refused to accept the fact that their daughter was in need of anything. When Lisa even screamed out that she needed help, they simply wouldn’t understand. She even w...
“No wire hangers, ever!” Joan Crawford spoke to Christina Crawford in Mommie Dearest the movie. The scene where Joan says this is just one example of her having one or more psychological disorder. Psychological disorders are behavior patterns that cause a person to anguish. Also, they may cause a person to obstruct the capability to manage everyday activities (Rathus, 2010). Joan displays many psychological disorders, but the most visible are bipolar disorder, histrionic personality disorder, narcissistic disorder, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.
For many years schizophrenia was thought to be caused by bad parenting, the so-called "refrigerator mother" was to blame. Today there exists much more information on the disorder and the evidence points to the commonly accepted notion of a chemical imbalance in the brain. Unfortunately, many people still confuse schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder when, in fact, the two are separate. Schizophrenia however, deals more with people who simply don't have a firm grip on reality.
She was taken to the hospital after she tried to commit suicide, she took a bottle of aspirin. Her reason for taking the full bottle of aspirin was a major headache, which was also alarming to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist recommended that she be admitted to a mental hospital for women, where she can rest and recover. Another sign of the Borderline Personality Disorder is casual sexuality.
... middle of paper ... ... It is quite possible within the realm of psychological theory that the stress of childbirth, coupled with post-partum depression and the mental strain of having to repress her emotions, triggered the schizophrenia.
Therefore, she felt chronically empty and bored on the inside. For the eighth criterion, she does not meet this as Susanna was very passive in the way she dealt with feeling alienated. Instead of having intense anger or recurrent physical fights with others who she felt didn’t understand her, she simply withdrew from everything which is why she was very detached with others. Lastly, she does not meet the ninth criterion for borderline personality disorder as she never experienced any dissociative symptoms. For the most part, Susanna was very conscious of the pain that she was feeling and as detailed earlier in the description section went about connecting to her pain by self-harming herself to essentially outwardly showcase the suffering she was feeling on the
Her detrimental relationship with her mother turned into a psychosomatic disease, which later affected her life and the people in it.... ... middle of paper ... ... 12 Nov. 2013. http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=8255d75b-58ea-4383-be87-4f5601606c51%40sessionmgr13&vid=1&hid=26&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=lfh&AN=17088173>.
There is a definite biological basis for this disease, although it is not totally understood. For a long time schizophrenia was a mystery to doctors and scientists. Virtually any patient with a psychological disorder used to be placed under the expansive umbrella that defined the disease. Poor parenting was a misleading, early excuse for the troubles caused by what is now known to be substantially based in genetics. The most current idea of origin is that this disorder occurs during the crucial beginning months of life, those spent within the womb. Neither ...
...manic depressive state which leads her to her suicide. She no longer has a will to repress any untold secrets from the past or perhaps the past. Since she has strayed far from her Christian beliefs, she has given in to the evil that has worked to overcome her. She believes she is finally achieving her freedom when she is only confining herself to one single choice, death. In taking her own life, she for the last time falls into an extremely low mood, disregards anyone but herself, and disobeys the church.
Schizophrenia is a devastating mental disorder that strikes teens and young adults crippling their brain and fragmenting their mind. Victims of schizophrenia remain in endless mental agony constantly confused and in terror. They suffer constantly from hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia. Approximately 1% of the world population live with this disorder making it one of the most common mental disorders in the world. Despite the numbers, there is no known cause or cure for schizophrenia. So what is the disorder, why is it so hard to eliminate, and why do so many people fall victim to the fragmented mind?
Schizophrenia is a devastating and costly mental disorder that affects 1% of population worldwide. Patients manifest clusters of positive, negative and cognitive symptoms in early twenties and are often left with life-long severe mental disability and social stigma. Cognitive deficits in patients with schizophrenia are considered core symptoms of this disorder, and can manifest at the initial stage (Elvevåg and Goldberg, 2000). Atypical antipsychotics ameliorate positive symptoms but may only modestly improve cognitive symptoms (Richelson, 2010). In addition to this, some of the typical antipsychotics are even have deteriorative effects on cognitive symptoms (Heaton and Crowley 1981). To find the appropriate treatments for cognitive deficits of schizophrenia, it is important to know the underlying pathophysiology.
What is Schizophrenia? Schizophrenia is brain disorder that makes it hard to see the difference between reality and imagination, have normal emotional responses, and act normal in social situations. Schizophrenia is relatively young, it has only been around for less than 100 years. It was first discovered by Dr. Emile Kraeplin in 1887. He believed it was a mental illness. A few documents take Schizophrenia’s origins back to Egypt during the Pharaoh’s rule around 1550 B.C. People originally thought schizophrenia was simply madness, and usually associated it with madness, even though it is quite different from madness. Symptoms of this disease include Positive symptoms, which are: hallucinations, or things that someone can see, feel, smell, or hear that do not really exist. Many people hear voices inside their heads, see people that are not there, or smell odors no one else smells. Delusions are another symptom, also known as bizarre beliefs, these may include paranoid delusions also, which are delusions that tell the person that others are trying to hurt them. Thought Disorders are a symptom in which the person thinks unusually or dysfunctionally. Movement disorders may be present in schizophrenic people, they may seem like twitches or small, sharp, and sudden movements. Schizophrenia’s “negative symptoms” are harder to recognize. These include the flat affect, in which the persons face doesn’t move and the voice is droning. The lack of pleasure in life is another once, along with the lack of ability to start and sustain activities, and little speech. These symptoms prevent or block the person from living a normal life because they cause social, physical, and emotional, and mental problems. This may lead to psychosis, insanity, or ...
This disorder is characterized by inflexibility and fixation on rules, procedures, and orderliness (Rathus, 2010). At the beginning of the movie you watch Joan scrub her hands, fingernails, wrists, forearms, and face. Then she moves on to cleaning her house, she even goes as far to move furniture around to clean certain areas even after she’s already cleaned them. In one of the later scenes of the movie, Joan attacks Christina after finding one lone wire hanger in her closet in the midst of all plastic hangers. She goes ballistic and throws all of Christina’s stuff around then drags her into the bathroom and orders her to wash her already clean floor. Another obvious disorder exhibited by Joan is the paranoid personality disorder. This disorder causes people to be more suspicious of others and to interpret others’ motives as harmful or evil (p.525). She constantly overworked her children and forced them to give up their toys and gifts from their birthday’s and holiday. She did this because she was concerned about them growing up spoiled and never learning to work for what they wanted. She also did this because she wanted the publicity that came along with her children giving away their toys. She was also extremely paranoid that Christina was making fun of her, even though she was just taking after her mother’s footsteps and acting. Joan found Christina’s skits as mockery. In her later years, Joan was always aware of the younger, prettier, more talented women that were trying to take her job. Lastly, Joan sports the histrionic personality disorder multiple times throughout the movie. A person with the histrionic disorder is overly emotional and dramatic and seeks constant attention (p. 526). This side of Joan comes out at one of Christina’s birthday parties. Reporters ask to get pictures of just Christina, and Joan thinks it ridiculous that they don’t want her. She begins to compete with
Signs of the depth of the narrator's mental illness are presented early in the story. The woman starts innocently enough with studying the patterns of the paper but soon starts to see grotesque images in it, "There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a...
Self-destructive behaviors are also very common in individuals with Borderline personality disorder. Susanna validates this trait by her lack of motivation, conversations about suicide, and her suicide For example; Lisa, the diagnosed sociopath, displays very little empathy for those around her. This is made clear when she sees Daisy’s post suicide body and is not saddened whatsoever. Another accurate portrayal is the patient with anorexia nervosa Janet. Janet refuses to eat, is in denial about her condition, is emotionally labile, and is always exercising.